Monday, November 2, 2009

Mme. Pépin: Tortilla Pizza

Since this weekend was a tad all over the place due to holiday festivities, I didn't want anything too complicated for Sunday night's meal. It was to be a smaller gathering, so I decided that the Tortilla Pizzas would be appropriate for size and difficulty. Unfortunately, Mme. Diat had to cancel as she had family obligations. The number for dinner would be four.

They were really quite simple, and I highly recommend making them as a quick dinner. Mme. Poupée and myself stopped by Jewel to pick up the few ingredients that were required. Upon arriving home, we got another dinner guest involved (the fourth was running late) and formed an assembly line of sorts. I prepped the tortillas (flour as I'm allergic to corn) by coating them in olive oil on both sides and sprinkling on some parmesan cheese as Mme. Poupée sliced the tomatoes and the remaining guest grated the fresh mozzarella. We placed the tomato slices atop the tortilla, sprinkled it with cheese and then put it in the oven at 500° for 8 minutes. Upon completion in the oven fresh basil was cut up and placed on top.

It was a success (marking our second success that weekend) and was both simple and flavorful. Jacques also has recipes under that recipe for a salmon pizza and a seafood pizza.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Mme. Poupée: The Why

When I was a little girl, I would sit content watching my mother bake all sorts of goodies. Cookies, pie, cake, brownies, everything she made tasted delightful. I would always lean into the counter, pointer finger first, only for her to stop me and say, "Help me by watching, not touching!"

This, I believe, set me on the path I am now: undomestic goddess.

Never did I get to measure out flour, crack an egg, or spoon butter into a pan. Occasionally, if I was a good girl and if my mother left the room, I got to lick the spoon.

Now that I am a grown woman nearing my mid twenties and finally living on my own, I am embarrassed to say that I consider Velveeta mac and cheese a challenge. Armed with a decent sized kitchen but no counter space or any sort of entertainment, and cheap utensils that typically bend out of shape, I can honestly say I hate to be in the kitchen. I have no desire to be a good cook. Scratch that. No desire to be any kind of cook! There is even a joke I have yet to live down that involves a whisk and spatula. How was I supposed to know the difference?

Currently, I am in training for the longest run of my life, a marathon. I train after my work hours and arrive home often after the 8 o'clock hour. After a shower, I am in no hurry to cook myself something. My dinners have been as follows: a bowl of cereal, or oatmeal, or an apple, and if I'm feeling really brave, I will microwave some dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets. Embarrassing, I know.

When Mme. Pépin informed me of the loss of her dear godmother and the cookbook project, my first thoughts were that the dishes would be too complicated for me to help. I own two cookbooks. One of which is a book on stirring up cocktails. I am completely unqualified. I figured I could help by bringing some bread or some cookies, I do have a sweet tooth, or return to my days as a little doll and "Help by watching".

I hope that as the project continues, I become more useful and take some of the knowledge with me. Both Mme. Pépin and Mme. Diat have so much to offer with their cooking skills and I would be happy to be half the cook they are someday. I don't even have the patience to start a recipe. One day, I hope to tackle on a meal by myself and prove to myself that I can be a good cook. Here's to hoping..

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Mme. Pépin: Cannelé

After much online research, and no time for shipping, I found a few stores that might sell Cannelé pans. Since my friend and I were already headed for a day at the mall, we figured we'd check out Bloomingdales, William Sonoma, Anthropologie (long shot, but any excuse to visit that store...), and Crate & Barrel. We never quite made it to Macy's home section as we never made it past the shoe section. After purchasing some great boots we decided to call my father to inquire where one might find Sur La Table, where this pan allegedly existed.

A few towns over we found Sur La Table. After locating the bakeware section we found individual Cannelé molds... at $8 a pop. Seeing as we would need quite a few, that did not sound like a practical option. Next we found a rubber pan that had the same shape and size cavities as the $8 molds. It only made 8 and was still more than we would have like to have spent (we'd need a few of those rubber pans to make the whole batch). So, being the resourceful former art students that we are, we found a charming pan of beautifully shaped molds. They looked to be about right. A little shallow, but there were plenty of cavities and it wasn't going to cost me my first born child.

After watching Charlie Chan and the Wax Museum (and scaring ourselves plenty) we decided to remove the mixture that we made yesterday, load up the pan, and start the oven process.

Attempt 1: we each took a spoon and started to spoon the mixture into the molds. That took too long.

Attempt 2: we filled a turkey baster with the mixture and poured it into the molds. That was even more involved then the spoons.

Attempt 3: my friend saw a tea pot on my hutch. We filled the tea pot with the mixture and poured it into the molds. Bingo. It was clean, efficient, and quick.

The cannelé start at 300 degrees for 30 minutes. At which time the oven gets increased to 400 degrees for the next 40 minutes. Since our pan wasn't as deep as the one in Jacques' photograph, we decided not to leave the cookies in the oven for as long. We took them out after 30 minutes instead of the prescribed 40. They smelled great. The pan was non-stick so they came right out of the pan (thankfully I didn't have a repeat of the Tomato Hand Pie's incident). And, they tasted excellent. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside, sweet. Perfection.

It rounded out our perfect Halloween.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Mme. Pépin: Pre-prep for Cannelés

Tomorrow is Halloween. My un-domestic friend and myself have opted to have a quiet night in as opposed to the ever-so-popular-amongst-our-age-group boozy night on the town. I've obtained some of my childhood favorite scary-ish movies (several of the Charlie Chan flicks and Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein), which we will watch tomorrow night. While we were planning our evening in, my friend was looking at Jacque's cookbook (she hadn't looked at it yet). Having a major sweet tooth she went straight for the dessert section and settled on the page featuring the Cannelés. We decided that would nicely round out our evening festivities.

Cannelés, according the Jacques, feature crêpe batter and sugar cooked in a special pan. While the outside hardens, the inside stays creamy. They are a very French dessert.

The recipe needs to be started a day in advance, so tonight we plan to make the first part of the recipe.

Cannelés require a special pan of sorts, appropriately called a Cannelé Pan. Obviously, the gourmet chef that I'm not, I do not have one of these sitting around my apartment, nor does my friend. Now, unlike the cheesy potatoes, I'm not going to just improvise with my tools, lesson learned. We will not need the pan for this evenings portion of the recipe, so we will head out tomorrow in search of it.

To aid in our search I did a little pre-research into where we might find cette pan. Sur la Table appears to have something, and William Sonoma said they had something when they appeared on Google, but I have yet to find it on their site. I suppose tomorrow will be an adventure as we locate the final piece to our recipe.

More to come.

Part 2.

My friend and I met up after my office's Halloween party. The ingredients for the Cannelés were pretty simple, and aside from the Milk I had all of them. Though once we got started we realized that Dark Rum was needed, somehow I missed that one. Thankfully, I had an unopened bottle of Amaretto from well over a year ago when I moved into my apartment, and we decided that that would be an appropriate substitute.

The assembly was pretty simple. Melted the butter in the milk. Added an egg and an egg yolk. Added the Amaretto, flour and sugar. Mixed it together bit by bit so as to avoid lumps. And put it into the refrigerator to thicken overnight.

More tomorrow.

Mme. Pépin: Gratin Dauphonaise

This past Sunday a smaller group assembled to gather round another one of Jacque's recipes. This time I planned to re-create the dish that my Godmother and I made together, the dish that inspired her to give Jacque's cookbook to me, the Gratin Dauphonaise, or in plain English, cheesy potatoes.

Becky, my Godmother, loved to cook and made it look effortless. After we made the potatoes, she whipped up a Bananas Foster just to give me a brief demonstration (I'm not ready to try that one on my own yet, especially not in my small kitchen). Everything, of course, turned out delicious.

Coming off of a successful rendition of the Onion Soup, I felt that this would be another notch to add to my belt of cooking successes. Though, I should mention, as not all of you are aware, the smell of onion lasted for almost a week in my apartment, and when I traveled to Texas for Becky's memorial (which I will mention was flawless), all of my clothing smelled of onion and needed to be aired out.

My dear Mme. Diat had taken ill, so I'd be doing this one with different aid. My sister and my other best friend stepped in to help with a few tasks as I orchestrated the meal. The plan was to have the cheesy potatoes with some steamed broccoli.

Becky emphasized the value of using a food processor on the potatoes, showing me how thin and even the potatoes could be. Unfortunately, I do not own a food processor (ergo, the Not-so-Palatable Pesto Disaster of 2008), so I set to work cutting the potatoes. Needless to say, my slices were rather thick and uneven. After a potato and a half, my hands were aching so my sister stepped in and finished cutting the final potato. I had my friend take care of the garlic. Knife in hand, she did her best to get the pieces of garlic as small as possible. Just to finish painting your mental picture of this scene, all of this is taking place in my living room as my kitchen doesn't have any counter space and is quite small.

While my sister was finishing up cutting the potato, I filled the large saucepan with half and half, a little salt, and some pepper (we couldn't figure out what peppercorns were and where to obtain them). The mixture, along with the potatoes went onto the stove and was left to boil. After reaching its boiling point, I poured the contents of the large saucepan (I feel like there's a better name instead of large saucepan) into a more shallow pan (I didn't have a gratin pan and Mother said a brownie pan would suffice), added the cheese, and popped it into the oven for an hour.

Needless to say we didn't eat until almost 9pm, but no one complained since the apartment smelled great. When the timer went off we anticipated the cheesy greatness that we were about to ingest.

What came out of the oven looked a little like skin and melted cheese. My sister inspected the situation and deduced that the 'skin' look was just the cream forming a skin (for lack of a better word), and that underneath it, the meal would look like the beautiful photograph in Jacque's book. For all intensive purposes it did. Sort of.

We sat down to eat, carved our portions from the brownie pan (literally had to carve it, the potatoes weren't coming out without a fight) and added the steamed broccoli to our plates (I bought the steam in the microwave in the bag stuff since I wanted to focus on the potatoes, and 5 minutes in the microwave couldn't be that difficult). There was bad news and okay news. The bad news was that the broccoli was cold and soggy, so much for 5 easy minutes in the microwave equaling broccoli perfection. The okay news, the cheesy potatoes were, well, okay.

Truth be told, they weren't as cheesy as the photograph or my memory let on. They also had completely fallen apart upon contact, perhaps they were over-boiled?

As much as my dinner guests (thankfully they were few in number this week) assured me that it was good, I was unsatisfied, I didn't do this meal justice. I will tackle it again at some point, and next time, I will be victorious.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Rebecca Wolfe 10/5/09

This morning as I sat on the El waiting for my arrival into Chicago my mother called from Texas (she has been there for Becky's final weeks) in tears. Becky was unresponsive. The rest of the day passed in a haze. I sat at my cube aimlessly checking e-mail. My eyes felt like they were melting off my face. Every time my phone rang my stomach dropped, that was it. But it wasn't. By 3pm my father and I had made contact and he had informed me that Becky had no pulse but that her heart was beating double time. It's fitting that the last thing to go on this wonderful woman was her heart. I cancelled my dinner plans and arranged for the rest of my family to meet in Oak Park.

As we sat down at Friday's and ordered our drinks we talked of how strange the day's events had been. When our drinks came my father proposed a toast to Becky. As we lifted our glasses a thought passed over me, I felt it, part of me knew it was over at that moment. My father felt it too and a minute later my mother called. Becky had passed as we were toasting her. It's like she knew that we needed each other and that we were finally all together. She was surrounded by those she loved, practically the entire town was there at her bedside.

Prior to my mother's phone call I had planned to write Becky today telling her of the Onion Soup. I feel like it was more than a coincidence that the beginning of my culinary adventure happened at the very end of her life. I just wish she knew that the first dish went well, I know she would have enjoyed hearing about the evening.

I'll be leaving soon, traveling down to Texas for my final goodbye. Upon my return I plan to make the dish that started it all, the Gratinée Dauphinois.

I'll end with my favorite quote:

"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt"
-Kurt Vonnegut

Mme. Diat: Onion Soup Gratinée

My body has hated me from day one and thus tries incessantly to overtake me. I have acid reflux that normally dictates it's unwise to eat onions; so I traditionally steer clear. However, as a soup, cheese, and bread lover, if French Onion Soup is on the menu, I am there. Last night, Mme. Pépin and I [with the assistance of my younger and much burlier brother] took our first venture into Chez Jacques with an Onion Soup Gratinée.

Aside from eating at almost 9 p.m., the dinner was absolutely delicious. In my mind, I had envisioned a product vaguely reminiscent of the Thanksgiving Cheese Soup that ended up, well, gray. For those of us not color blind, we realize that cheese should never take on a gray hue.

For this gratinée,Chez Jacques called for the onions to be thinly sliced and then browned. Fearing that we would get large, uncooked, onion chunks [see Thanksgiving Cheese Soup fears], I suggested that we grate the vegetable instead. Aside from causing me to physically weep while working, the idea turned out well. Though I can see why Chez Jacques asks that you slice them. Grating the onions makes the bits quite small and they often get lost with the cooked bread. The next time I try this recipe I will remember that and, to test the consistencies, I will try slicing instead of grating.

The friend who was in charge of purchasing baguettes decided to bring one French bread baguette and one multi-grain baguette. And while I appreciate a bread with personality, I don't think you want anything other than an Italian or French baguette. Straying from those two options might lead to some awkward questions such as, "What is this seed in the soup from?" That's, more often than not, a question that you don't want to hear.

The recipe asks that you brown the bread in the oven before putting it into the broth. While I was eating, I thought about the French Onion soup that I'd come to love. The bread in every variation that I've tasted had a spongier and lighter feel. I have to wonder what we can do next time to achieve that kind of airiness in the bread. It was a tad heavy and tasted more like a mushy dumpling than the bread I had remembered.

All in all, the soup turned out fantastic. And I wouldn't at all hesitate to repeat the recipe again. Once the soup was out of the oven, it was a welcome surprise as our dinner guests were getting antsy, Mme.
Pépin and I hesitantly looked at one another as we took our first bite; first recipe down, a whole book left to go.

Mme. Diat: The Why

When I was in 7th grade, I took my first job at the rectory adjacent to my school. My duties were simple, I was kitchen staff. I was meant to answer the phones and the door, take messages, serve and clean up dinner, and assist in cooking. It was during these seven years as staff at the St. Leonard rectory that I developed my passion for cuisine.

I remember working with Louise, a fiery Italian woman from the south side of Chicago, who would tell me, "a pinch of onion and a pinch of garlic. You can't go wrong with a pinch of onion and a pinch of garlic." Sitting in that kitchen with the warmth from two ovens and a stove filling the room, listening to her describe how to make the perfect soup stock or how to create her family marinara you would picture a child sitting at the feet of their grandparent. To be honest, that's how it felt. Louise taught me that cooking was more than just a cup of water combined with a pinch of salt. There was a heart and soul to each dish that you gave to the people sharing in it. She took me in as a daughter and passed onto me family recipes brought with her mother from Italy.

There comes a moment when the student must become the teacher. When I left the warm hearth of that rectory kitchen, I knew that for me, it was time.

When my best friend who, as undomesticated as she is tries- with all of her heart, presented me with a brand new cookbook and a plan, all I could do was smile. Normally, my best friend is contented with pretzels and applesauce for dinner. So when she proposed that we cook our way through Jacques Pépin's favorite recipes, I knew that there was no way I could say no. When the two of us get together, it is always an adventure and I knew that this trek into squab, tripe, clam chowder, and the delicious desert section would be no different.

Harriet Van Horne wrote, "Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all." Over 10 years ago, my passion for cooking was bore out of a friendship that I will not soon forget. Today, I know that another friendship will create some dishes that will soon not be forgotten.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Mme. Pépin: Onion Soup Gratinée

The unique thing about Jacque's book is that he accompanies all of his recipes with a narrative of sorts about how that recipe fit into his life. As I was reading the narrative preceding the Onion Soup Gratinée I grew apprehensive about my abilities, culinary and equipment wise, to complete that recipe.

He writes of how his mother would prepare her version of the Onion Soup. There were crusts of cheese to break, wine and such to pour into the soup and 30 minutes worth of browning the onions. Thankfully, his recipe was slightly less complicated. Though I must have overlooked the part about needing individual soup carafes. Ah well, I had two iron pieces that I could fill as needed and that could go into the oven.

The setting I used to debut the Onion Soup was a Sunday night dinner among friends. There was going to be enough of us there that it warranted a double recipe. Everyone decided to pitch in and help in the creation of the soup. As soon as one of my friends showed up with the baguettes, the preparations began. One chopped the garlic and grated the fresh onions, which brought the whole room to tears, and is still giving me a bit of a headache, as another got the onions browning (which took an eternity-not his fault, there were a lot of onions to be browned). I cut the bread and browned it, lined the two iron pieces with it, lay the cheese on top of it, and left it to wait for the onions to finished.

A side note, last November I attempted a cheese soup, which seems very similar to what I made this evening. Except that one went horribly wrong. The onions weren't cooked enough, the base wasn't made correctly, the end product turned out... grey.

So needless to say, this time, I was making sure those onions were cooked properly. When the time came we put the onions into a pot of chicken broth along with the garlic, salt and pepper. That was a whole lot of liquid to boil, even with the lid on.

Finally, the soup was ready to be put into the bread and cheese lined iron pieces, and covered with more cheese. After 30 minutes in the oven, what emerged smelled and looked not too much unlike the photo in Jacque's book. In fact, I didn't fill the iron pieces to the brim, so my soup wasn't overflowing and making a mess as was the soup in his photo (although photographically interesting, cheese didn't sound like something fun to be scraping off of my iron pieces).

I solved the problem of not having individual carafes for everyone by using my ladle to slice the cheese into sections and made sure everyone had a bowl full of cheese/bread/soup. Aside from a few people noting that it was incredibly hot (I warned them), the overall conclusion was that it turned out very well. In fact, some people admitted to be very surprised. I must admit that I too, was a tad skeptical at first, but quite pleased with the outcome. I would definitely make that meal again.

My boyfriend's adage about the quality of my work vs the time it takes for me to complete cette work, holds very much true. Yes it turned out very well, but it took quite a while to get to that point. One down... how many more to go?

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Mme. Pépin: Trip 1 to Jewel

Weather.com = sunny, upper 50's. Outside = raining. Hair = adorable. Scratch that, ruined. Thankfully Jewel is only a 10 minute walk from my apartment. I was pleased that the first recipe only had a few ingredients, some of which I already owned. Phew, I didn't feel like spending a small fortune to cook my first dish. As I gather the necessary ingredients I breathe a sigh or relief, not too expensive. Onions, check. Garlic, check. French bread, I'll pick it up tomorrow in time for dinner. Chicken Stock, oh geeze, 16 cups! 8 cans later... Cheese.

According to M. Pépin, I have the choice of using emmenthaler, gruyère or jarlsberg. Considering I've only ever heard of gruyère, I figure that's my safest option. I arrive at the cheese counter. No gruyère. No emmenthaler. But there is jarlsberg... for almost $10/lb! I asked the lady behind the counter if they carried gruyère, she'd never heard of it before. Hmmm. I wasn't even going to try to ask about the emmenthaler, since I'm pretty sure I could barely say it correctly. So jarlsberg it is. The lady asked if I was sure that I wanted 1.5 pounds of it at almost $10/lb. Unfortunately for me, I was sure. $14 and some change worth of cheese later, I was on my way to the checkout.

The rest of the ingredients totaled up to barely $20, then the cheese was rang up and my grocery bill jumped. Ah well, I'm sure $14 and some change for cheese will seem like nothing by the end of this endeavor. When I got home, I tasted a small slice of the cheese that broke the bank, one thing's for sure, it's going to make for some good soup. I hope.

Mme. Pépin: The Why

Why would the most undomestic of my parent's three children want to face the challenge of cooking through "Chez Jacques", Jacques Pépin's 100 favorite recipes? This is the person whose friends run in fear if she ever mentions that she made a pesto, the person whose kitchen has one piece of counter space, the person who is still scared of her gas oven after living in that small kitchened apartment for over a year now.

The why is that my God-mother is about to die. I only knew her well enough to know how amazing she is for a short time. One of her passions in life is cooking, and on one of my visits to Pittsburg, TX (yes, such a place exists) she insisted on showing me how to make Gratin Dauphinois from Jacques Pépin's "Chez Jacques". A month or so later she sent that cookbook to me with the inscription:

"To live outside oneself – to make others happy is a great joy – try it with cooking. Love Beck"

Now, as we count down the days until her departure from this earth, I've decided to do something with that cookbook, that inscription. I wrote to her a promise, that I'd cook through "Chez Jacques". Is it going to be painful, quite possibly. Expensive, most definitely. Scary, yes.

Thankfully, one of my best friends has decided to join me for this culinary adventure. Together we're going where few 20-somethings who aren't already chefs have gone before. Into a world where people eat things like sweet breads (and no I'm not talking about the rolls, look it up).

My mother was pleased when she heard my quest, she also thumbed through the book and veto-ed a few things: fois-gras, tripe, and headcheese. My boyfriend offered up "You're not a bad cook, it just takes you 3x as long to complete a recipe". Armed with my friend, some less than adequate cooking utensils and Jacques' thoughts and recipes I set out.